Wednesday, May 11, 2016

The American Geophysical Union has been engaged in a debate over whether the union should be associated with ExxonMobil, considering that companies activities to undermine climate science (with a great deal of success, I might add). After debating the issue, the AGU board of directors voted to continue its partnership. My response was to resign from the union. The AGU president has responded to my resignation. Her response, and my reply are shown below.

Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 9:48 PMSubject: RE: ExxonMobil

Dr. Keating,

I
am very disappointed to lose you as a member, but I do respect your
decision. Your years of support
and engagement with AGU have been very important and meaningful, and I
do not take this loss lightly. I will most certainly share your comments
and resignation with the rest of the AGU leadership.

This
has been a difficult conversation for us to have – particularly knowing
how much it would impact
our members on both sides of the issue. For several weeks, we have been
receiving thoughtful feedback from members like you expressing a
variety of views on the subject, ranging from calls to see AGU expel
ExxonMobil from our community to calls for us to increase
our engagement with them in an effort to influence their corporate
policies. Despite that difficulty, we felt that the issues raised
presented an opportunity – and an obligation – to directly engage
ExxonMobil and the energy industry more broadly, and to bring
into that conversation the representatives of governmental,
environmental, economic and related scientific sectors. Societal
challenges concerning energy use, population growth, climate change and
more require that people and organizations with diverse viewpoints
and expertise work together. As an evidence-based organization with
roots in both the climate and energy communities, AGU is uniquely
situated to create an environment for that kind of dialogue.
Facilitating that dialogue is something we feel will be incredibly
beneficial to our community, our environment and our society
world-wide.

While
I understand your discomfort with our decision, I sincerely encourage
you to consider being a part
of the development of a strategy for our engagement with ExxonMobil and
the larger energy industry. Our goal is to drive a more transparent and
meaningful dialogue about the roles the science and business
communities should play in addressing issues where
science does – and needs to – inform society, and we hope that you will
be a part of that dialogue. We are asking members to share their
thoughts on how to best approach engagement with ExxonMobil in the
future, and the views of those who are not completely
comfortable with the decision are an equally important part of that
planning.

I
am copying our member services team on this message so that they can
process the cancelation of your membership.
You should be receiving a confirmation notice from them shortly. Please
know that, should you change your mind in the future, we would be more
than happy to reinstate your membership.

Again, I thank you for your service. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,

Margaret

Thank
you for your response but I have to say I was even more disappointed
when I read it. Your line of logic is familiar and I recognized it
immediately. This is the same rationale used by organizations who
refused to disassociate from South Africa during the apartheid era. The
analogy is a good one. ExxonMobil has demonstrated it is a criminal
organization, willing to subvert science in order to protect its
profits, has knowingly engaged in activities that have resulted in a
lower standard of living for millions, destruction of the climate and
environment, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people annually.
And yet, you think you will change the company by continuing to engage
them.

They
are laughing at you all the way to the bank and will be glad to hold up
the fact that the AGU is still in partnership with them.

Thank
you for canceling my membership. There is nothing further you will be
able to do for me for as long as you chose to associate with criminal
organizations.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

One of the greatest deceptions promulgated by anti-science deniers is that there is a great deal of debate in the scientific community concerning the reality of AGW. This, of course, is a blatant lie (sorry anti-science crowd, it really is). Numerous studies have shown that not only are 97% of all climate scientists convinced of the reality, but over 99% of all published climate scientists are convinced. Now, there is an interesting update about this as reported in Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal - The Consensus on the Consensus Is Itself Overwhelming. There are some very significant points he brings up.

It has been reported by several studies that there is a consensus of 97% of published climate scientists that AGW is real. Now, this 97% figure is supported by yet another study. Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming, published in Environmental Research Letters, studied the peer-reviewed published literature and found the percentage of the authors accepting AGW is consistent with the 97% figure.

In the peer-reviewed paper Climate Scientists Virtually Unanimous: Anthropogenic Global Warming Is True, published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, the authors state that a review of published, peer-reviewed papers from 2013 and 2014 found only 4 authors out of 69,406 rejected AGW. This means in excess of 99.99% of all published climate scientists accept AGW. They go on to state there is no convincing evidence against AGW in the peer-reviewed literature.

As Dan says, the people who claim there is no AGW are in the scientific minority and are unable to produce any scientific evidence to show why they are right and the entire scientific community is wrong. Yes, there really is a consensus.